Yellow card / Red card usage at 2004 IRI

[Steve W]

I must disagree that it would be easy to say what is agressive or not. Just by reading this thread there are many different opinions. Take the Championships last year. One of the teams (forgive me for my poor memory) was built for one purpose only. To play defensive. I heard many coments on how well they played. I also heard just as many comments on how they should have been DQ'd and not allowed to continue with their agressive play. This thread is not to discuss either point but this is stated to show there are always different ways to look at agressive or defensive.

As for issues like entanglement, our team had it's wire/pulley system destoyed a couple of times at Championship alone. Should the team that did it be DQ'd or penalized? I don't believe so. Maybe FIRST could have fixed the problem by giving us a little more weight to work with. We then could have protected our wires. This is also unreasonable. We built the robot knowing what the pitfall might be. The wires were partly protected by our frame but we had to go with weight. We were given the instructions to build our robot robust. We knew from day 1 that there could be interaction. I give no fault to the teams that caused us damage. This does not mean that a team that INTENTIONALLY damages another should not be shut down as per the rules. There is also a rule that states if a ref decides that a robot has a part that can cause damage that it must be fixed before their next match.

One other issue. It is nice if you have time to explain rules like they did at IRI. This would cause every team to have at least 1 less match at competitions. Having worked as an announcer for the last 3 years and being at 10 regionals and 2 Championships, I see how rushed we are to keep things going. I continually have someone pushing to keep things on time. There is no time to stop and explain all of the penalties and infractions to the teams and spectators. I even had a hard time getting explanations for refs calls during the change over as the refs were busy scoring andgetting ready for the next match..

Sorry again for the ranting.